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Sound Travels Friday: Mid East Piece II

Ahhh... The end of the week is not supposed to make you feel this way... like I want more time to work on this Mid East Piece. Especially after missing out on Wednesday with a bout of the seasonal. In any case, finish what we did, with a set strong on the Jewish music(big shout out to Ilana, who hooked it UP!).And though the Levant was big in today's set, I started with an artist who has seen Sound Travels, Azita, an Iranian-born artist who has split time in this country and her homeland while making music as diverse as experimental modern punk and traditional Iranian-vibed tunes like this one at the start.

That works into an artist who is of Yemeni-Jewish origin and has recently relocated to the States to work her musical degree, Insar Bakal whose latest is an odd journey of the mystic tribal vibe, etherial Hebrew vocals over a dynamic, but largely club inspired beat that works more often than not; as it is here. Turkish funk. That is the next wave of Occidental hotness, and Mustafa Ozkent is exactly the type of overlooked Anatolian classic that will get the scene he came from a look, and some residual seepage into the mainstream though only Heads will know really, and really because a few, like me, will ever play it on the radio. (just donate now:)! (Hah))

Anyway, I played a pair of cuts so good that despite my lack of knowlede would suffice for their freshness, so just enjoy 'em already, do we always need a name? And the doom tek is a apparently a drum from the middle east with a sensitive head made from plastic and in the hands of Hamdi El-Khayyat, almost a weapon "Feel The Doom" is less ominous perhaps, but still hot. As is the end of tody's set, Rachid Taha's cover of "Rock The Casbah." Taha hails from Algeria, and in the hand of an actual Middle-Eastern performer, it's almost easy to forget that it was written in the west. Good stuff, if you missed what I had, here you go...

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